


The Park

by thomasjeffersonsmacaroni



Series: The Other 51 [41]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-29 04:54:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10846890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thomasjeffersonsmacaroni/pseuds/thomasjeffersonsmacaroni
Summary: Polly plays the guitar in the park every night. Frances goes around mourning the life she lost.It's a miracle they hadn't seen each other yet.





	The Park

**Author's Note:**

> Random rarepair? Fight me.  
> Also, read my "fair new york" series. That's how this ship (Franpolly) came about.

The air in the park was cooling, evening already beginning its steady transition into night, but Polly Jefferson paid it no mind. She continued to sit on the grassy ground, strumming her strings, playing a song that she knew from memory.

Her father played the violin, back before she left him. That was his favorite tune.

Polly’s fingers were growing numb, and every bone in her body longed to go back home. But against herself, against her body, she stayed.

A couple of times, people came up to her with money. Usually, it was old people or young children with brightness in their eyes, clutching dollar bills in their hands and looking around for a place to put them. But Polly refused them all.

“I’m not homeless,” she would say, which was the truth.

“I don’t need it,” she would say, which wasn’t.

Polly needed money terribly. She lived alone on minimum wage, neither her dad nor her older sister ever called, and she hadn’t had proper human interaction in…what was it? Months? Almost a year?

At this point, she wasn’t sure what she needed. But it was definitely _something._

But the fast-paced world around her was cruel to people who didn’t know themselves.

 

Frances Laurens clutched the box of paints in her hand like she needed it to survive. That was almost the truth, if she was honest. That goddamn box of paints was the only thing keeping her from going insane.

She was looking around the park for something to paint. The art exhibit had asked for something that no one would expect, but Fran was no good at that. She was the best at still life, at setting up her easel in front of a set of leaves and painting their every curve. Fran knew that portraits were in very high demand, but she had never tried to paint people.

It was no wonder that the “starving artist” trope was real. Fran hadn’t eaten anything other than ramen for weeks.

But goddamnit, how could she go into anything but art? How could she pursue a desk job and drain herself out of any energy she had left? How else could she keep herself from falling into oblivion when her life was playing out like an ancient Greek tragedy?

Her painting was the only way out of that. So every evening, she went to the park in the middle of her city and looked around for something she could draw.

It was a miracle that, until the night that changed her life forever, she had never met guitar player Polly Jefferson.

 

Polly had by now moved on to a different tune, one that she had to look up the notes for. She bit her lip in concentration; it was a rather unfamiliar song, and the complex directions on the website she had found weren’t helping at all. It was at this time that she heard the tapping of feet walking across the sidewalk in front of her.

The owner of the feet turned out to be a Latina woman about her age – that is, a young college student – holding an easel and setting it up with a determined look on her face. Polly watched her take out the paints and glare at them with a fierceness.

“Hello,” the woman said, tone of curious wariness lacing her voice.

“Hi, there. Why are you torturing those paints?”

“I’m not. I just can’t think of what to draw.”

“Draw a tree. Or the sidewalk. I don’t know.”

“I can’t do that,” the woman sighed. “I’m applying for this art exhibit, which is my only way to earn enough money to not die of starvation, and they’re asking for something ‘original’ or ‘creative.’ Something you wouldn’t expect people to draw.”

Polly furrowed her eyebrows. “That’s dumb. People should draw whatever they want to draw.”

_“Exactly! I’m so angry right now!”_

The woman stopped and smiled shyly. “I’m sorry. I’m unloading my struggles onto a random stranger. My name is Frances, by the way.”

“Polly.”

Frances held out a hand. “It’s nice to meet you. I like your guitar playing. So, what brings _you_ here to this park?”

“Just relaxing. I’ve been having a long day. No, a long _life,_ actually.”

“What happened?”

Polly hadn’t told anyone about what happened with her family. But Frances seemed like a different kind of stranger.

“I used to live at home with my parents and my sister Patsy. But then, they wanted to have another child. They had a girl, Lucy, and later another girl, Jane. Neither of them lived past a couple of weeks. The childbirth weakened my mom, though, and she died a little while later.

“My dad sort of…went insane. He used to be bright and full of life, always working on something or other, but now he’s just catatonic. He won’t do anything but read books and mutter.

“Patsy couldn’t take it. She left as soon as she could and didn’t speak to us again. I knew I had to take care of my dad, but…I couldn’t take it, either. I sent him to my neighbor and moved here.

“Neither of them want to talk to me. Not Patsy, not my dad. I’m all alone here.”

Frances knelt down and sat next to her. “I’m sorry that happened to you. I’ve had a rough life, too.”

“What happened to you?”

“Well, you see, my dad is gay. Before he was out, he used my mom as a beard, and she didn’t know it. They had me, and he didn’t even love her. He moved out to live with his boyfriend when I was a little baby. Or maybe one year old. I don’t know.

“After he did, my mom sent me to an orphanage. She was angry, I remember, and she didn’t want to hurt me. I haven’t seen them for a long time. I barely even remember them.”

As Fran spoke, her voice grew weaker and weaker, and Polly couldn’t resist wrapping her arms around her and letting her sob into her shoulder. They stayed like this for what must have been half an hour before Fran released the hug and stood up.

Wordlessly, she moved to her easel and began to sketch something with a pencil. Polly, not wanting to break her focus by staring at her, picked up the guitar and started playing again. Slowly but surely, the new tune came to her, and then, it was like a second skin.

And Frances, after a couple of hours, held up a painting with a grin on her face.

It was one of two women: one black like Polly and playing a guitar, and one Latina like Fran and painting. Above them were abstract drawings of people, and although they were little more than shapes, Polly could see her parents, and Patsy, and Lucy, and Jane, and people who she assumed were Fran’s mother and father.

Polly hugged her new friend tightly. They had come together through their grief, but both of them knew that that would not be the end of their relationship.

 

**Author's Note:**

> listen John Laurens is my freckled child but I have a lot of pent up rage for him for leaving his wife and not seeing his daughter and this fic was a way to channel that rage


End file.
